"Magic City" did not exactly shy away from big stories in its first season, and it's going even bigger -- but also smaller -- in Season 2.

"For storytelling, the reason why I created the show was I realized there was a story engine built into it," creator
Mitch Glazer said Saturday (Jan. 5) at the TCA winter press tour. "The time and place was incredibly dynamic historically. And then once you create this family and set them in motion, it gave me the opportunity to deal with what I think is one of the most important and exciting periods of American and world politics."

The Starz series picks up in the spring of 1959, a time when it looked like Fidel Castro might still look to the United States for support -- Glazer notes he appeared on "Meet the Press" in April of that year. Ike Evans (
Jeffrey Dean Morgan) thinks Havana may hold the key to getting out from under the thumb of mobster Ben Diamond (
Danny Huston).

Ben isn't the only adversary Ike has to deal with in Season 2, though. Ben's boss from the Chicago Outfit, Sy Berman (
James Caan), arrives in Miami and is intent on taking everything he can.

It's still a huge canvas, because [the real story] was," Glazer says. "I love dealing with the nexus of mafia, anti-Castro forces in Miami and this hotel family. ... I humbly think this season is bigger and yet more intimate than last. The ambitions for this year were huge. The storytelling takes us to Havana and Chicago -- it's a large canvas, but told through the eyes of this family."